


Naked, My Soul

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Angst and Humor, F/M, Found Family, Mutual Pining, Nudity, Partial Nudity, Pining, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 14:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12632961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: In Cassian’s defense, he doesn’t intend to walk in on Jyn changing. He doesn’t intend to find her in his quarters at all, in fact; frankly, he didn’t even know she knew where they were. He’s there so rarely himself that to walk across the threshold and see her among the stark stillness of the room makes him think that he’s gone to the wrong side of the base.





	Naked, My Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I feel? Like this? Was supposed to be happier? But it's not. Prompted by an anon on Tumblr who, verbatim, requested, "Jyn and Cassian walk in on each other naked lol."
> 
> This is that. This is a really pretentious, angsty, multi-part version of that. I hope you like it. XOXO

I.

In Cassian’s defense, he doesn’t _intend_ to walk in on Jyn changing. He doesn’t intend to find her in his quarters at all, in fact; frankly, he didn’t even know she knew where they were. He’s there so rarely himself that to walk across the threshold and see her among the stark stillness of the room makes him think that he’s gone to the wrong side of the base.

All that to say: Cassian freezes.

For several heartbeats, he’s transfixed by the warm skin of Jyn’s stomach, peppered as it is with puckered, white scars. The fabric of her shirt blocks her eyes, but she whirls at the sound of him, giving him an excellent view of her small, pert breasts, held back as they are by her breast band.

She appears, for lack of a better description, to be stuck in her shirt.

Cassian sucks a breath in through his teeth, too shocked to laughed, too – distracted. He backs out of the room with an aborted, apologetic grunt, never once thinking to slam his eyes closed. He catches a glimpse of confused, furious green before the automatic door glides shut.

Cassian considers himself an intelligent man; thus, he doesn’t stick around. He takes up a brisk walk and makes it to the end of the hall as quickly as he can without breaking into a run. His pulse flutters at his throat. He tells himself it’s just decorum, but then again, Cassian Andor has seen half naked women before, on jobs and on base without discrimination. It’s never bothered him. It’s just nudity.

He goes to swallow and finds that his mouth is dry.

Cassian closes his eyes and sighs.

He doesn’t have time for this. Rook, the defector, has busied himself scoping transports for their suicide mission to Scarif; he has Cassian’s personal comm number and could summon the lot of them at any moment. Cassian curls his hands into fists at his side and forces himself to breathe.

When Melshi asks on their way to the hangar, he blames the flush of his face on Yavin IV’s heat.

They’re boarding when he sees Jyn next, her hair tied back and mouth turned down in a glower. Cassian hesitates to make eye contact, busying himself instead with the transport’s console and firm dismissal of Kay’s dismal projections.

They’ve made the jump to hyperspace when Jyn finally meets his gaze. Cassian grits his teeth, watching her gear herself up to speak.

“It’s good we have you, captain,” she says, at last, all too aware of the audience they have around them. “You seem the type to walk straight into trouble.”

Several of their fellow mutineers exchange amused glances – Jyn’s statement, to them, is unequivocally false. Cassian juts out his chin for the show of it and does not flinch, does not breathe until Jyn looks away again.

It’s nothing, he tells himself, moving up and towards the cockpit, that when he closes his eyes he sees her flushed skin, the fury that melts his heart.

 _It’s nothing_.

II.

Jyn’s mouth tastes of sand and sunblast and blood – not the most unpleasant combination Jyn’s been privileged to have tried over her many years of life, but certainly not her favorite. She distracts herself, counting her teeth and swallowing iron while shaking Cassian’s shoulder in an attempt to keep him awake. In the cockpit of their highjacked transport, Bodhi is bleeding out with Chirrut holding a bacta patch to his side.

Above them and the rest of Scarif, the Death Star looms.

Jyn decides, in a blurred rush, that if they make it off of this damned planet alive, she’s going to learn how to fly.

The world lurches. Baze swears, guttural and unforgiving, as Chirrut tumbles forward onto the flight console. Bodhi whimpers. Jyn wheezes. Cassian groans. His eyes slip shut, and all of a sudden, nothing else in the ship matters. Jyn grabs him by the collar of his borrowed Imperial uniform and _shakes_.

“Cassian – Cassian, no, you don’t get to die on me right now. Cassian, come on, couldn’t you have better timing?!”

She sees the corner of his mouth quirk upward and almost sags with relief. His hand floats up and wraps around her wrist. It’s barely a touch, but like every inch of her, it burns.

“Help me get this off,” Cassian slurs.

Jyn blinks. “What?”

She can’t imagine the effort it takes Cassian to open his eyes, but he manages. His gaze takes several seconds to focus, but when it does, Jyn feels as though he’s pierced her. “The uniform,” he says (and each of his words is slow, careful, even now as he’s fading). “I don’t want to die in one of their uniforms.”

Jyn studies him, counts the spots of blood on his face and memorizes the curve of his jaw. “Okay,” she says, at last. “Okay.”

They move slowly, trying not to jostle each other’s wounds. Jyn unbuttons Cassian’s jacket and shucks the material aside, trying her best to ignore the screaming muscles in her back and the grimace on Cassian’s face.

His boots come next. She lets his torso rest on the cool floor of the transport and demands that he talk to her while she undoes the laces.

He tells her about meeting Kay. When his boots and socks have been set aside, Jyn looks up and finds that he’s crying.

He undoes his own belt. Jyn lets it land atop the already-discarded jacket and bats his hands away as he fumbles with the button of his pants. There is no hesitance in her movements, and it makes her wonder. Still, Cassian lifts his hips and helps her remove the last of the Imperial stain from his skin. When Jyn’s added it to the pile of clothes, he’s shivering, but smiling, as well.

“You know,” Jyn manages, “if you wanted me to take your clothes off, you could’ve just asked.”

The joke falls flat, but Cassian still laughs. In the cockpit, Jyn sees Baze shake his head and swear at them, low and fond and tired.

It surprises her when Cassian speaks again. “Come here.”

Jyn turns back to him and stares.

Cassian opens his arms to her, delirious, and waits. His skin in flushed from the cold, and it is this, Jyn tells herself, and that fact that _he’s dying_ that makes her go to him. She curls up at his side, still in all of her armor, and tries to warm his shaking limbs.

Exhaustion hits her, unrelenting. Above her, Cassian yawns. Bodhi calls their names from the cockpit, but Jyn finds herself too tired to respond.

She lays an arm across Cassian’s torso before dropping into a black, dreamless sleep where the only sound is Cassian’s breath: slowly in, then slowly out.

III.

Cassian is still in Yavin IV’s med bay when the base alarms start to wail. He shoots upright in his bed, ready to swing his feet onto the floor, but his body shrieks with sudden pain, and he’s forced back down, hands flying to the mass of stitches embedded in his abdomen.

One of the medical droids wheels across the threshold to his room, chirping admonishments while administering a dose of morphine.

“Report,” Cassian snaps, batting the droid away from the side of his cot.

It takes him longer than usual to parse the series of hisses and tweets, but the message is horrifyingly clear. The Death Star is coming.

Cassian stop breathing

He listens to the droid retreat and the rush of footsteps out in the hall. The world goes blurry around the edges, but Cassian can’t quite bring himself to care. He stares up at the ceiling and lets the roar of the alarms wash over him as he counts the pock marks in Yavin IV’s clay.

He doesn’t let himself think of his family, buried in a mass grave on Fest after the second Imperial raid. He doesn’t let himself wonder about Chirrut, Baze, or Bodhi, scattered through the medical ward behind doors he cannot see.

He tries not to let himself think about Jyn.

He tries.

It hurts to imagine her rage and fear, but it warms him, warms him like the awkward angles of her body tucked against his while she masqueraded as a Death Trooper. It’s familiar. He needs it. Cassian closes his eyes and lingers in that height and haze, too dazed to move.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for him to realize that the alarms have fallen silent. Cassian jolts to awareness only when he senses a presence lingering on the threshold of his room.

“Wake up, Cassian.”

Despite himself, Cassian almost smiles. “Wasn’t asleep.”

When he opens his eyes, it’s to find Jyn scowling down at him. She’s woefully underdressed, nothing but a med bay gown, but Cassian knows that he’s no better.

“Liar.”

It hurts to laugh. Still, he does. “What’re you doing here, Jyn?”

“Getting you.” With his consciousness as permission, Jyn begins to move. Cassian doesn’t try and stop her as she starts to fiddle with the machinery surrounding his cot.

“I see. Where are we going?”

He thinks he sees a flash of a smile on Jyn’s features, but it’s gone as quickly as it comes. “The war room.”

Cassian lets his head fall back against his pillow with a sigh. He doesn’t resist, though, as Jyn reaches for him. The warmth of her skin feels like Scarif all over again; like a kiss; like a treasure.

Cassian’s bare feet hit the floor of the med bay with an insignificant thud. He can feel every inch of Jyn as she slings his arm around her shoulders. It’s his height, however, that lets him see her wrinkle her nose.

“You smell terrible.”

He’s going to pull a stitch, laughing at her like this, but Cassian can’t bring himself to stop. “I’ve been a bit immobile,” he says. “It’s not like you’re better.”

It takes at least two minutes for him to remember how to walk, and even then, his view of Jyn is constantly interrupted by fleeting, black splotches.

Her warmth remains. No matter how close he gets to collapsing, Cassian can always feel her. It’s enough.

(It has to be enough.)

IV.

A farm boy, a scoundrel, and countless pilots from Red and Gold squadron blow up the Death Star. Jyn and Cassian, tucked into the shadows of the war room, sag against one another as, bathed in green light, Princess Leia’s voice breaks. “We’ve won.”

For a moment, there’s silence. Then, weeping breaks out in one corner of the room. Headsets fall onto desks; Jyn watches as several stalwart veterans collapse or pull each other into hugs. Cassian buries his face in the crook of her neck, and she lets him breathe and doesn’t comment on the hot tears that settle on her skin.

He, in turn, doesn’t say a word as her own tears dampen his hair.

Still, as the more able-bodied of the two, she’s the one who guides them from the war room and out towards the hangar. When she sees Bodhi, too small in his orange jump suit, she runs. Cassian lingers behind her, but pain and a slower pace cannot keep him from smiling.

Bodhi goes wide-eyed as Jyn throws herself at him and clings. He babbles nonsense in her ear, but he clutches back to her despite the rattling of his limbs.

“Do you think -” he tries, only for his voice to fail. “Do you think he’d – that Galen’d -?”

“Yes, Bodhi,” Jyn murmurs. “Yes.”

Breathing in sweat and swaying on the spot, Jyn catches a glimpse of Cassian coming in close. It’s difficult to gauge the red flush of his cheeks as he pulls them both into a hug. Still, past Bodhi’s head, he finds her gaze. Jyn holds for a moment before looking away.

They don’t retreat to their separate quarters; instead, Rogue One, minus Kay, settles beneath the X-Wing Bodhi’s borrowed and split a bottle of Corellian whiskey. When Jyn wakes in the morning, her mouth feels as though it’s been stuffed with cotton, and her head is contentedly settled on Cassian’s shoulder. Baze’s legs have been slung over her own, and Bodhi’s burrowed into her left side; it is nearly impossible to move, and for a moment, she’s breathless for the anxiety of it.

Then, Cassian reaches out and squeezes her hand.

Jyn lifts her head, perhaps a touch too sharp, and sees him blinking at her, sleepy and grimacing against the light in his eyes.

She almost – _almost_ – smiles.

A week passes. A quiet, misdirected tension settles over the base, even as the bulk of the Death Star rubble is cleared away. Jyn grits her teeth as Cassian is forced back into med bay after tearing his stitches; as Chirrut begins working with recruits alongside Baze; as Bodhi drifts through the hangar, stroking unused transports and repairing what he can.

She’s antsy enough that, when a General Airen Crackin messages her on her comm, she answers.

The Alliance offers her a mission: reconnaissance on Mon Calamari, a quick two days. She’s to chase rumors in Coral City regarding a localized rebellion led by the city’s Imperial-enslaved citizens.

“No interaction,” Cracken tells her as they pace through the halls. “Observe, inform, and get out.” He turns on his heel, one eyebrow raised. “Think you can handled it?”

Jyn resists the urge to gnash her teeth and forces herself into coolness. “Can I have some time to think?”

“You have six hours. Dismissed.”

Hands curled into fists, Jyn stalks into Yavin IV’s mess and finds Chirrut holding court at one of the tables. She sits down across from him with a bowl full of bean mush sprinkled with vitamin substitute. It sticks to her lips as she eats it.

She shouldn’t complain.

She does.

Chirrut laughs through the insults she spends at the beans’ expense. “I do not need my sight to know that it’s not the food that’s upset you,” he tells her. He doesn’t quite consider her with his sightless eyes, but Jyn bristles under the sense of being studied.

“You do not need to tell me,” Chirrut says, at last, “why it is that you’ve chosen to remain. Rather, I do wonder how you intend to make it worth your while.”

“Surprised you put it that way,” Jyn says with a huff. “I never knew monks believed in being selfish.”

Chirrut fiddles with his own pile of bean mush and shrugs. “In the end, you only have to live with yourself,” he says. “Your life will be happier in the long run if you befriend your own soul.”

Jyn lifts an eyebrow and bemoans, quietly, that the expression is lost on her friend. She sets her spoon aside, however, and makes careful study of her chafing cuticles.

It startles her when Chirrut reaches out. His hands are just as calloused as her own.

“Do not let your loyalties here keep you from opportunity, little sister.”

Jyn hesitates, then flips her hand so her palm presses against Chirrut’s. She doesn’t respond, and after a moment, the Guardian breaks their contact.

Lunch ends in relative silence, with Chirrut retreating in search of Baze. Jyn lingers, fiddling with her clean bowl. When she eventually rises, her wandering feet lead her to Yavin IV’s medical bay.

Cassian, when she sees him, watches her through bleary eyes and pulls his hand away from his IV, recently re-inserted, Jyn knows, to combat his dehydration. Jyn rolls her eyes at him as she settles in beside his cot. It releases something tight in her soul to hear him scoff at her derision. The tentative spark of joy is almost enough to distract her from the gentle rise and fall of his bare chest.

He’s just as scarred as she is, this strange, determined man. Jyn shakes herself and misses a hint of Cassian frowning.

“I talked with Cracken,” she tells him after several minutes of companionable silence.

Cassian raises an eyebrow and waits for her to continue.

“I...potentially have a mission. I’m not sure if I should take it.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Watching Cassian’s face is like completing a puzzle. Jyn feels a shock of pain as she studies him. Even his micro-expressions have been trained out of him; he’s a neutral mask. A liar. Objectively speaking, she should never have let herself trust him.

Despite herself, she sighs. “Well, if I’m not here,” she says, “who would come to visit you?”

One of Cassian’s eyebrows quirks upward, and Jyn almost smiles. “You’re worried about me getting lonely?”

“Maybe.” Jyn shrugs. “Or maybe I’m worried about the staff who’ll have to deal with your boredom.”

That shuts him up. Jyn offers Cassian a winning smile and delights in the frown that pulls his lips down. She goes to continue only for a droid to glide into the room, effectively dispelling the gentle, amused air they’ve developed between them.

“Jyn Erso,” the droid chirps. “My scanners report increased bruising on seventy percent of your body.”

Jyn’s confidence evaporates. “Excuse me -”

“The droid C3PO has reported your diversions with Kes Dameron and Wedge Antilles to Central Alliance Command,” the med-droid continues. “You’re likely to undo your treatment if you continue to participate in these sparring matches.”

Jyn blusters and forces herself not to look at Cassian. “What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?” she demands.

If the droid could blink at her, she’s sure it would. “Captain Andor is listed as your superior in Alliance records,” it reports. “He has the clearance to be made aware of your physical status; if he disapproves, he can issue a statement declaring his belief that you may be unfit for active duty.”

Jyn whirls back towards the bedside, her eyes narrowed with accusations. It’s gratifying to watch Cassian raise his hands in surrender, though it is less so to see him wince.

“I wouldn’t pull you from a mission unless it was vitally necessary,” he tells her, “and I won’t put any word in regarding the one Cracken’s offered you.” With a twitch, he shifts his gaze to glare at the droid.

Jyn stays quiet through his re-administration of pain killer. She waits until the droid has left the room to even think of responding.

“I don’t remember enlisting,” she says, at last.

It takes a moment for Cassian’s gaze to focus on her. Jyn grits her teeth and reminds herself to be patient.

“Mon Mothma asked me,” he begins, then stops to clear his throat. “She asked if I thought you were going to stay.”

Jyn’s lips thin. “You said yes.”

Cassian takes a long, deep breath. His eyes slip closed. “I told her that I had hope,” he admits, “but I had no further input.”

Jyn turns away from his bedside before he cracks his eyes open again. She stares at the opposite wall and tries to steady out the frustrated tempo of her heart.

“You’ve been fighting?” Cassian asks, his voice soft around the edges.

“Not a lot for me to do,” Jyn tells him. She doesn’t turn around. “Enlisted or not, I don’t think your Council trusts me.”

For a moment, there’s quiet. Then: “Cracken trusts you.”

Jyn hears Cassian shifts and grits her teeth.

“I trust you.”

This earns him a glance over her shoulder. Jyn finds herself caught in his gaze and held, her breath stolen by the fierce belief he puts behind the words.

Then, as quickly as the heat between them forms, it passes.

“Let me see your bruises,” Cassian says.

“What?”

“Your bruises.” He leans back on his pillow, eyes nearly falling shut.

“I’m not doing a strip tease for you, _captain_.” Jyn means it as a joke, but the sudden shock of red across Cassian’s face catches her off guard.

“I’m not asking you to,” he insists, fighting off yawn as he does.

Despite herself, Jyn feels some cool fortification around her heart melt. She waits until Cassian’s settled back into himself, then lifts up the hem of her shirt. She watches his gaze flicker over the fist-sized indents all across her abdomen and drops the fabric the moment she sees him start to frown.

“It’ll be worse if I take that mission,” she tells him.

Cassian wrenches his gaze away from her hands, now folded in her lap, and studies the contours of her face. Jyn lets him, remaining as cool and impassive as she can force herself to be.

She doesn’t know if Cassian finds anything, but eventually, he sighs. “I may be your captain,” he says, “but this seems like something you need to do. Don’t let me stop you.”

The strange discomfort Cracken knocked loose in her chest cascades into the rest of Jyn’s soul. She nearly smiles before catching herself, but it feels like the whole of her body’s caught light. Cassian must see – something, because some of the tension drains from his face.

“Check in with Bodhi before you go,” he suggests. “Baze and Chirrut, as well.”

“Like I wouldn’t,” Jyn snorts. She rises, cracking her back as she does. It’s impossible not to feel Cassian’s eyes racing over her skin.

She lingers by his bedside for a moment, then another, watching him as he watches her. After a heartbeat, Jyn bites her lip, then reaches out and brushes her hand over Cassian’s. Cassian flips his hand over, and their palms kiss.

Jyn’s breath catches in her throat.

“Be safe,” Cassian says. It sounds more like a plea than a request.

“No promises.” The words spill out of her without her consent. Jyn leans in and squeezes Cassian’s hand before his expression can close in response. The heat of him makes her flush, even as she forces herself to let go. “But I wouldn’t want you to get lonely.”

With that, she turns on her heel and stalks out of his room. She thinks she hears soft laughter as she makes her way out into the hall, but Jyn dismisses it.

She’s not made it back to her quarters before her message to General Cracken’s been sent.

V.

It’s a mission, Cassian knows, that’s only meant to last two days. He’s released from med bay on the day Jyn’s meant to return, and he waits alongside Bodhi, both of them in the hangar under the guise of offering mechanical assistance to the remnants of Gold Squadron. In reality, Bodhi is the one on his knees beneath the X-Wings while Cassian offers stray words of advice, all the while keeping his eyes glued to Yavin IV’s skies.

Hours pass.

Jyn doesn’t arrive.

It’s long gone dark by the time Bodhi retreats from the hangar, earnestly covered in oil and grease. He claps a shaking hand down on Cassian’s shoulder, and though he hesitates, Cassian walks him back to the quarters he shares with Chirrut and Baze.

The Guardians don’t have to ask what’s happened when they slink inside. Chirrut rises and presses his forehead to Cassian’s. Baze says nothing, but he tucks Bodhi into his bunk.

Cassian bids them all good night, then makes his way back to the hangar.

He falls asleep against the wheels of Wedge Antilles’ X-Wing. When he’s shaken awake in the morning, Cassian has an unimaginable number of kinks in his back, Wedge is outrageously amused, and Jyn still hasn’t come home.

Cassian himself is grounded, but he still manages to pace his way across the length of the base and back several times over the course of the next two days. It’s only when Draven finds him with bags under his eyes that he allows the captain back into Intelligence’s labs: desk work only at a limit of four hours at a time.

Cassian accepts.

Days pass.

Jyn still doesn’t return.

*

Yavin IV’s sky teases a morning purple by the time Cassian forces himself back over his threshold a full standard week after Jyn’s supposed return date. He catches sight of himself in his ‘fresher mirror and winces.

There’s no care in the way he sheds his shirt, though his pants come off more slowly, exhaustion making the buttons more difficult than they should be. When his uniform’s been folded on the end of his bed, Cassian forces himself into his ‘fresher. The tile is cold beneath his feet, but it wakes him. He prods the growing mess of scruff of his chin and debates for several moments whether or not he should shave.

He gets into his sonic, instead.

The rush of water and cleanser stings his skin. Cassian stands stock still for longer than he should, tracing patterns into the wall as though they have meaning.

He never meant to get attached. He’s not supposed to – Cassian is, first and foremost, a liar, a spy; attachments aren’t for individuals in his line of work. Without Jyn, though (without any of Rogue One, really, without _Kay_ , but especially without Jyn), he feels – listless. It’s unpleasant.

Cassian scowls and presses his knuckles against the misting tile of his ‘fresher. When the frustration and exhaustion become too much, he steps out and reaches for his Alliance-provided towel.

It’s not until he’s finished drying out his hair that Cassian hears the familiar hiss of his bunk door.

He moves without a thought; the blaster he keeps under his sink is trained on the door before the intruder has managed to set their boots inside the room.

“Cassian?”

It’s not the surprise in Jyn’s tone that forces his hand down, but the quiet. Cassian feels a fist unwrap from around his lungs, and he drops the blaster. It clatters on the ‘fresher floor.

“Jyn.”

The harsh, white light, he knows, does little to hide how he looks, undressed, ragged, still damp from the sonic. Jyn is backlit by the night-shift red of the hall; he cannot make out her expression as she enters his bunk.

“You’re back,” Cassian croaks.

Jyn doesn’t respond. Cassian watches the shadow of her slinks forward, then bows to undo the laces of her shoes. She leaves the boots beneath his bed along with her socks, then removes her jacket. Her scarf goes next. It’s followed by her blaster belt; the vibroknife she keeps in the small of her back; the lockpicks she straps to her bicep.

Cassian feels his mouth go dry as she reaches up and undoes the tight knot of her hair. She runs her fingers through it to soften the kinks. Even in the dark, Cassian can see it brush the tops of her shoulders.

“What happened?”

He should care more, he knows, that he’s not wearing any clothes, but it’s not the most vulnerable state Jyn’s seen him in. Still, he watches her cautiously as, at last, Jyn steps into the light.

There’s a speckle of blood beneath her ear, and it looks like her nose has recently been reset. Without a thought, Cassian reaches out and presses his palm to her cheek. He forgets to breathe as Jyn leans into the warmth.

“You know how it goes,” she says, and Cassian can feel her smiling. “I’m good at finding all sorts of trouble.”

It hurts to laugh. Still, Cassian does.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
